New, meet old. ✨ While so much of this little old house is being rebuilt with new materials to meet modern framing standards, I’m trying my hardest to salvage as many materials and fixtures second-hand as I can; to make our home feel as old as its original build year (1903), but also to keep […]
I made another shadow box! This time with the assortment of razor blades I found behind the bathroom wall upstairs, nestled amongst clouds of blown-in insulation. These date back to the 1920s-1940s and were presumably dropped into the wall through a long-gone medicine cabinet. It just goes to show well-curated trash can become treasure! I […]
This isn’t the final location for this little shadow box but I’m too impatient to wait to share it. These items—Luden’s cough drop box, wooden spool, and pink squeaky cat toy—were found in the old heat register during our duplex renovation in 2013 (along with a lot of other balls and cat toys). I’ve roughly […]
Rear wall framing is officially up! I feel so, so grateful to get to work with this duo on our project. They’re smart, fun, skilled, patient, and willing to entertain all my wacky ideas and problem-solve with me on the fly. They also enable my hoarding ways and save as many old-growth timbers as they […]
Brasso is pretty magical stuff! On the right is before-Brasso and on the left is after-Brasso. I received these light fixtures and Brasso from neighbors in my Buy Nothing group. The lights came out of a 1910s/20s house on Queen Anne. Since I’m already wearing my respirator inside due to all the wildfire smoke, I […]
It may not look like much, but this little wall absolutely made my day yesterday. It’s the first step towards creating the rest of the building envelope. The foundation going in was the first major milestone. Trevor and I finishing demo was the second. Now, it’s framing. I worked with our two crew members yesterday […]
Finally, something non-destructive in our feed! The garden is going so well and I’m still in such disbelief that everything is growing and remaining fairly healthy. This morning I harvested chamomile to make tea. I typically avoid caffeine because it makes me feel terrible, so I’m thrilled to now have a regular source of herbal […]
We’ve been spending a lot of time at our duplex over the last week, cleaning things up between tenants. This has been one of the more “involved” turns we’ve ever done, including tackling the wildly overgrown yard and repainting the entire unit. As we were leaving the duplex late last night, I walked into the […]
Certainly not nearly as ✨historic✨ as the newspaper we found this past weekend, but this evening I found this nearly-full pack of cigarettes in a stud cavity under the stairs while cleaning out insulation. They likely date back to 1954 when the house went through its first gut renovation (stripping the house of all its […]
Empty . We’ve been away from IG. Instead, we’ve been talking a lot, reading and listening to content by black activists, signing petitions, and making donations to organizations fighting to end racism. We’ve been reflecting on our own privilege and discussing ways to utilize that privilege to be actively anti-racist. . We’ll be back with […]